by guest writer, Keith Ward

I was born on the side of a mountain. We only had one car which Dad took to work, so we walked everywhere and climbing on the bluffs was a form of recreation. Walking on a trail comes naturally to me and I rarely watch my feet. My feet automatically find the easiest path and long ago I had to learn to be consciously careful about this or I would push Dene off into the rough when we were strolling about our property. 

Not only is Dene a city girl who never stepped off a sidewalk in her life prior to our marriage, she had serious vision problems even before the surgeries began in 2005.  She has no natural ability to walk a path.  Always on our hikes, I get ahead and then wait for her, especially at a rough spot, to help her through.  Since 2005, the problem has grown so that a 4 hour hike for me is 3 hours hiking and 1 hour waiting (at best). But, we still have fun and enjoy all the same things others do on a hike.

I suppose I could search a concordance and count all the times the Christian life is called a walk and add in all the references to a path or a way or some synonym, but you already know there are a lot.  Some find the path fairly easy while others view the same part of the trail with trepidation and slowly and fearfully take each step.  Shall the stronger just rush on ahead and leave the weaker ones behind?  Or should their love overcome their desire to push onward and cause them to wait for and help the weak?  Can the “natural” point out a view or a wonder while the handicapped leans on his shoulder for a moment’s respite?  Can he not see that the trail he thinks is so easy now may up ahead become much harder for him in some way that the one who now struggles will find to be a highway? Their roles will be reversed.

Some hikers quit.  It is too hot, too far, there are too many bugs, the trail is too difficult for my skill level, etc.  In some cases, we simply must leave them and go on ahead.  However, I suspect we take this option much sooner than we would in “real life.”  Should I turn and Dene was not back there at all, how far would I search?  Or would I shrug my shoulders and return to the campsite and fix supper for one?  Should she become discouraged and sit down on a boulder, saying, “I quit!” how long would I linger and encourage and persuade?  I once became a long term crutch when she twisted her ankle, and found an unmapped short-cut to a nearby road. Do we call out search and rescue or do we have difficulty remembering the names of all the people littering the trail behind us?

Love came to seek and save that which was lost. Love built a highway.  Can we be pilgrims on His road and not love and reach out to fellow travelers? Let us determine to make their path smooth and to wait for them to set them forward on their journey.

Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees; and make straight paths for your feet, that that which is lame be not turned out of the way, but rather be healed. Hebrews 12:12-13

While I was teaching music I was a member of several professional organizations.  My favorite was the local group which met seven times a year in members’ homes for business, some high-spirited performances, and a potluck lunch.  Once we met in a house just off the highway, down a lime rock road.  In the middle of the meeting, a rain came up—not just any rain, but one we around here call a “toad strangler,” several inches in less than an hour—they happen all the time in Florida. 

The rain had stopped when it was time to leave and we took off down the dirt road shortcut in a caravan of cars headed to our various studios to meet the students for the day.  Suddenly, the cars ahead of me came to a halt, and ladies started climbing out, gathering together and peering up ahead.  I turned off the engine and joined the milling crowd at the head of the line. 

Water had run across the road.  It had not cut a deep rut, and in fact, was a nice shallow-looking, easily fordable stream, but we had all lived in the country long enough to know you don’t just drive through water running across an unpaved road.  “Someone needs to walk out there and check the road,” was the consensus. 

Have I mentioned that at 35 I was the youngest in the group by about thirty years?  Instantly, all heads turned toward me.  Having been silently elected, I slipped off my shoes and started across the newly created waterway.  I took five firm steps only to have to grab my skirt and hike it up over my knees as I sank exactly that deep on the sixth.  Instantly I had visions of those jungle movies I used to watch on Saturday afternoons as a kid, where the first one in the safari line sinks in the quicksand because, in spite of everyone telling him to be still, he wiggles and squirms and sinks before anyone can even think to cut a vine and use it to pull him out—or if some bright fellow does think of it, twenty people on the other end cannot out-pull the suction of a big mud puddle.. 

A good minute later it dawned on me that my name was being called, and I still had not sunk any farther.  My feet had found a solid layer of hardpan about two feet below the surface so Tarzan swinging to the rescue was totally unnecessary.  I made my way back to the group with the most unladylike thwock, thwock, thwock noises as the suction released with each step.  We all carefully backed our cars down the one lane road, turned around in the driveway from where we had started and went the long way home, down the paved state highway.

Hopelessness in the scriptures is often pictured as “sinking.”  Jeremiah prophesies that Babylon will sink and shall not rise again because of the evil I will bring upon her, 51:64.  Amos warns Israel that they are in for the same punishment: they shall sink again like the River of Egypt, 8:8; 9:5.  And all because of sin.  Even Peter, when he tried to walk on water, began to sink because of little faith and doubt, Matt 14:31.  And truly, just like sinking in the quicksand (at least in the old grade B movies), there is nothing we can do but hope a savior happens along.  Praise God, he has!

The Psalmist pleads in 22:8 Commit yourself to Jehovah, let him deliver you; let him rescue you, seeing he delights in you.  In spite of the fact that, like an ignorant city slicker, we walked out into that mud on purpose, in spite of the fact that we ignored warning after warning, and kept right on wiggling and squirming, and even when we have been pulled out before, but keep stepping right back into the same pool of quicksand, Jesus is ready to hold out a hand and save us. 

Deliver me out of the mire and let me not sink… Let not the waterflood overwhelm me and swallow me up…Answer me, oh Jehovah, for your lovingkindness is good.  According to the multitude of your tender mercies, turn to me; and hide not your face from your servant, for I am in distress; answer me quickly. Psa 69:14-17

Dene Ward

Last year we made a distressing discovery—the seam sealing tape on the rain fly to our tent had come loose.  Unfortunately, we made this discovery in the middle of the night during a driving rainstorm when water suddenly began pouring on us as we lay in our sleeping bags.

So before our latest camping trip, we pulled out the fly and set about resealing the tape.  We found out that not all the tape had come undone, just the places where more stress was put on the fly—at the staking points and over the top where it stretched tightly across the tent poles.  I suppose that makes sense.  After all, where is it that your pants are more likely to rip but where and when you stretch those seams the most?  In the back when you bend over.

That brought to mind the disciples’ request for the Lord to “Increase our faith.”  I had always thought of this as a simple request, sort of a “Help me get better” generic prayer.  Suddenly I thought to check the context.  Maybe there was a reason for the request, maybe those men were under some sort of stress.  So I looked up Luke 17:5 and checked the verses immediately ahead of that one.

Stress?  Jesus had just given them a laundry list of commands that would have stressed anyone out.

“Temptation is sure to come,” he begins in verse 1.  Not “may come” or even “will probably come,” but “sure to come.”  If ever a Christian feels stress it is during temptation.  Yes, I think I might need increased faith to handle those times. 

Then he goes on to talk about those who cause others to stumble.  I suppose nothing stresses me out more than worrying about how what I say or do may affect others, especially since I teach and write so much.  Yes, I need more faith to keep teaching and keep writing, especially when I receive negative reactions or hear of someone who misused what I have said, and even more when I realize I have made a careless word choice.

Then Jesus tells them to forgive, even if the same person does the same thing over and over and over and over.  This is where, in an almost comedic outcry, we hear them shout, “Lord!  Increase our faith!”  As often as those same men misunderstood and failed to comprehend Jesus’ teaching, they certainly understood the need for faith when it comes to mercy and forgiveness.  We really haven’t reached the pinnacle of that Divine trait until we can say, “I forgive you,” without adding or even thinking, “Again.”

Look up the other places where we are told to strengthen or increase or add to our faith and you will discover other areas of stress that could trip you up—times when divisions occur, when sinful desires rear their ugly heads, when we need to love the unlovable, when we are told to obey whether we understand it or not.  All of these things can create stress in our lives, and endanger our souls.

“Pay attention to yourselves,” Jesus told those men in the midst of his teaching (v 3).  Don’t be caught unawares in the middle of a storm.  “Increase your faith” and so be prepared. 

We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring. This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering-- 2 Thessalonians 1:3-5.   

Dene Ward

I never thought about sodas having a shelf life until a couple of years ago.  We bought several boxes at a great sale and stacked them out of the way until needed.  We put one on the floor of the pantry back behind the potatoes, onions, and other odds and ends that won’t fit on a shelf.  It takes us 2 or 3 months to go through one 12 pack, so by the time we had finished the first few, we had totally forgotten about that one.  I only found it because I dropped something that rolled into the back of the pantry and had to pull everything out to find it. 

We decided to celebrate our discovery with a soda.  It wasn’t just flat.  It was the worst thing I ever put in my mouth.  On a whim, we searched the box, and sure enough, there was a sell-by date that was about a year past.

We all have shelf lives too, as much as we hate to think about it.  But instead of viewing this from the perspective of immortality—how short our lives really are--we seem to view it from the perspective of the shelf life of a bottle of milk—compared to that we live practically forever.  Maybe that is why we view death as a tragedy instead of a victory.  We keep looking through the wrong end of the binoculars.  One of the most difficult things we have to do as Christians is constantly changing our perspectives,  re-focusing our hearts from things in plain sight to things which the world cannot, and will not, see.

2 Chron 34 and 35 tell us the story of Josiah, the last good king of Judah.  He tried to clean up a Temple that was in disrepair and a worship that was in disarray.  As his reward God said he would not live to see destruction brought upon Judah.  What!?  Dying was a reward?  Yes, because this godly man had his perspective correct.  He viewed going on to the next life as far preferable to seeing God’s people destroyed.

Josiah died in battle at the age of 39.  Dying young was his reward for faithfulness.. What one of us would not look at that fact superficially and say, What a tragedy for such a good man to die so young?  Maybe I need to rethink my attitude about death.  I may grieve, but faith means my life will not be ruined by the death of a loved one.  I may have a little concern about how it will be to die, but faith means I should not be terrified. 

I hope I am not coming across as morbid.  Maybe having nearly become a relatively young widow twice in eight years has me more aware of the possibilities these days.  I simply mean to remind us that we have hopes and comforts the rest of the world doesn’t. 

I have a shelf life and so do you.  It is shorter than we think, and it will mean nothing to us in that first glimpse of Eternity.  I imagine we will be glad to be there, and wonder why we worried even a little.

For me to live is Christ and to die is gain…I am in a strait between the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for it is far better…Phil 1:21,23

Dene Ward

When I was teaching piano and voice, besides my own annual Spring Program and Awards Ceremony, my students sometimes participated in as many as seven joint recitals a year, programs featuring the students of several teachers at once. 

Sometimes the students were chosen according to their age—the Young Performer’s Recital was strictly for talented beginners.  It was their chance to shine rather than being lost among a studio’s advanced students.  Sometimes it was all about their music—the Parade of American Music featured students playing or singing the music of American composers.  If his best piece that year was Mozart’s Rondo in D, that particular student was ineligible.

Sometimes a panel of judges chose the students based on their performances in a recent competition.  The year we had five chosen for the Student Day Honors Recital was a banner year for us.  To have one or two chosen from a group of over two hundred students from a dozen studios was a good showing.  Five was almost unheard of.

At the receptions after these events, we teachers always enjoyed basking in our students’ successes.  We mined each other for teaching strategies and resources.  The experience exposed us to more crowd-pleasing music we could use with our own students, and our students to teachable moments we could discuss at the next lesson.  They could see for themselves why I insisted on such picky things as not taking your fanny off the seat until your hands left the keys when a student from another studio stood up without doing so, looking as if someone had glued her fingers to the ivory.  They could hear why long fingernails were verboten when it sounded like someone was trying to tap dance to Debussy and Haydn.  It also worked wonders for parental attitudes—suddenly they appreciated things they had before viewed as silly.

My favorite moments after these recitals came when people approached me with these words:  “I can always tell which ones are yours.”  It wasn’t because they played or sang particularly well—every student at these recitals did that—but not every student performed well.  We spent hours on things like how to approach or leave the piano, how to hold a pose over a final note, what to do in a memory lapse, how a singer should hold the mood until the accompaniment stops, and especially how to bow.  It’s one thing to know your piece; it’s another to be able to present a polished performance of it to an audience.

Sometimes I imagine God as the teacher watching our performances.  He knows we can do it.  I can do all things through him who strengthens me, Phil 4:13.  He gave His Son to show us how.  …because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you might follow in his steps, 1 Pet 2:21.  I don’t think it is out of line to think of the angels saying to Him, “I can always tell which ones are yours.”  Isn’t that the picture we get in Job 1?  Perhaps not literally, but in essence if nothing else. 

If life is one big recital, we should learn from the performances of others—what to do, what not to do, why some of the picky things we have always heard are important after all.  We should learn from our own mistakes as well—why do I always miss the same note?!  Your daily practice should take of that.

God is in the audience.  What He wants to hear more than anything is, “I can always tell which ones are yours.”

By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. 1 John 3:10

Dene Ward

Imagine for a minute that you are vacationing in a five star resort for which you have paid big money, more than you probably should have.  The flimsy shower curtain doesn’t quite reach side to side in the bathtub, the shower stream is thin and continues to drip after you turn it off.  The room is so cold you have to dress at the speed of light.  There is no television, telephone, refrigerator, or microwave, and the bed is hard.  No toiletries are offered, no room service, and you even have to carry your own linens with you.  How happy would you be?  You would probably not have lasted one night before you demanded your money back.

Campers put up with all of that, particularly tent campers, and they have a fine old time.  They understand going in what to expect, especially since they are paying a fraction of the amount of even a moderately priced motel.  Even when the weather is dismal, they seldom complain.  You take your chances when you live outdoors for a week.  Isn’t it interesting that the same circumstances can produce both happy people and unhappy people?

The only time we ever wrote a letter of complaint in 30 years of camping was last year.  Even campers in a state park campground have every right to expect a well-drained campsite.  When it rained our last night there, not only did the site not drain well, it collected water from all the surrounding sites.  We woke up in a pool of water.  The tent floor billowed up around us when we took a step.  At least it was waterproof, or the thousands of dollars worth of Keith’s hearing paraphernalia that we keep charging in the floor overnight (since there is no furniture in a tent) would have been ruined.

But we didn’t complain because of the rain.  We didn’t complain because it was cold enough for a foot high icicle to form under the water spigot.  We didn’t complain because the wind blew our light pole over, or the bathhouse only had two shower stalls for the whole campground.  That’s what you expect when you camp.  At least there was a bathhouse with hot running water and a heater in it!

It doesn’t take much to be a happy camper.  Maybe that’s why God has always warned his people about a life of ease.  Take care lest… when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God…(Deuteronomy 8:11-14).

Our lives on this earth are often depicted as camping.  We are sojourners.  We are just passing through.  Or are we?  How much do we take for granted in these days of luxury?  Every so often I remind myself to thank God for the running water, for the electricity, for the air conditioning.  I have lost them often enough, and for long enough at times, to remember that they don’t just happen; they aren’t “inalienable rights”—they are blessings.

Ask people today what is on their list of necessities and it will scare you to death.  An easy life makes a soft people.  Self-discipline disappears.  The ability to endure hardship is practically non-existent.  Complaining becomes an art form, and my problems are always someone else’s fault.  The worst result is the pride that causes us to forget God, Prov 30:8,9.

The results of trials and afflictions, on the other hand, are good, Deut 8:15,16; Psa 126:5,6; 1 Pet 1:6-8; 4:13,14. They make us stronger; they remind us who is in control, and build our faith and dependence upon God.  They remind us of the love God has for his children.  I know, O Lord, that your rules are righteous, that in faithfulness you have afflicted me, Psa 119:75. 

A parent who never says no, who never makes his child earn anything with his own hard work, who always gets him out of trouble instead of allowing him to reap the consequences of his mistakes, is not a faithful, loving parent.  These things build character.  Wealth doesn’t.  Luxury doesn’t.  Anyone who “needs” that to be happy will never in this life be a happy camper.

As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. 1 Timothy 6:17-19

Dene Ward

Have you seen the commercial where the father is playing hide and seek and finds his little boy up near the ceiling as his mother says, “We have a climber?”  I have one too.

Lucas, my older son, climbs.  If there is anything around taller than he is, he is on it without even conscious thought.  When he was a teenager, I would hear him call from outside.  When I got there, I could not see him anywhere.  Finally I would hear laughter coming from above me—way above me.  If there is a tree on our property he has not climbed, it was just not big enough to hold him.  I should have known. 

When he was about 8 months old and had just started pulling up on things and walking around them while hanging on (four weeks later he let go!), I had a cake sitting on my countertop, freshly frosted and ready for a potluck.  The kitchen I had at the time was a horseshoe shape, with a lower eating bar on the side of the counter that faced the family room.  I just turned around toward the oopposite leg of the counter for two minutes, wiping up crumbs.  Someone had left a chair pulled out (we won’t say who is guilty of never pushing his chair in).  Lucas pulled up on the chair, lifted a little leg, climbed into it, pulled himself up on the bar, then up onto the countertop and was literally two inches from planting his little fist in the cake as he crawled across the countertop when I turned around, gasped, and grabbed him. 

If you had seen an 8 month old baby, still crawling on the floor, and the height of the countertop, you would have thought the cake was safe too.  There was no way he would ever get near it, especially not that fast.  But for him, there was no way he could not get to it if he wanted it badly enough.

Too many times we give up without trying.  We look at the difficulty ahead of us and say, “I can’t.”  We excuse our faults by blaming God, “I’m only human.  I can’t help it.”  You know what that translates to?  “God made me this way.  It’s His fault I can’t do any better.”  What way exactly did God makes us?  And God created man in His own image, in the image of God did he make him. Gen 1:27.  Seems like a pretty good way to be made to me.  Every excuse we can come up with is just as baseless as this one.

“I can’t handle this, God.  You’re asking too much.”  Which means God is not faithful.  He will ask more than I can bear.  There has no temptation taken you but such as man can bear; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able… 1 Cor 10:13.

“How can you allow this to happen, God?”  Which means God can be tempted with evil, and he does tempt us.  Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no man.  James 1:13

“Every day I have to fight this battle.  It’s just too hard for me.”  Which means you can sin with impunity?  Watch, stand fast in the faith, behave like men! Be strong.  1 Cor 16:13.

“I quit.  I just can’t do it.”  Oh?  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.  Phil 4:13.

There was a little baby once who was just old enough to recognize a cake when he saw it.  It did not matter that it was up three or four times higher than his head.  It did not matter that he had to work hard to get there.  It did not matter that it was dangerous going.  He could have fallen and hurt himself badly at any time.  Did he care?  No, he wanted that cake and was determined to have it. 

Isn’t Heaven a little more important than a piece of cake?

Dene Ward

Poor old Martha.  How many times does she serve as a bad example from the pulpit or in women’s Bible studies?  She’s even had one of those studies named after her--Martha, Martha—and it isn’t a compliment!

Jesus spent many hours, in fact, many days, in the company and home of those three siblings, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.  You do realize it was probably Martha’s house:  and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house, Luke 10:38, which means the sacred duty of hospitality lay squarely on her shoulders.  No wonder she was so consumed by it.

But consider this wonderful attitude of Martha’s:  Jesus, for whom she has labored so hard, comes into her home and delivers a scolding that is recorded for all posterity simply because she works so long to give him her best (or so it appears), and still she serves him.  How many of my sisters might have thought, “The ungrateful lout!  See if I ever invite him here again.”  I would have been hard-pressed not to think those words myself.  Do you think you wouldn’t have thought them?  How do you feel and react when your husband indicates that he does not like a meal you have worked on for several hours?  Aha!  I thought so.

But Martha did not react that way.  She changed.  I know this because she served him again, shortly before his death (John 12), and though Mary was once again sitting at his feet, Martha never uttered a complaint against her.  And Jesus did not correct Martha, which proves that it was not the serving itself that was the problem, it was the attitude. 

Perhaps it was simply that she had decided what Mary needed to be doing instead of focusing on herself.  Some of us are more suited to being Marys and some to being Marthas.  The Lord had a physical body that needed serving.  It was not wrong for Martha to feed and house him.  It was wrong, though, for her to decide what Mary’s obligations were and then resent her for not fulfilling them.  That was between Mary and the Lord, not between the two sisters.  When we all take care of our own duties to the best of our abilities, the Lord will be served in every area. 

And here is another thing for which to praise Martha.  Imagine the Lord spent as much time in your home as he did with these three beloved friends of his.  Just how many times would he be scolding you?  I would be lucky not to have more than one a day recorded in my case, much less one in about three years’ time.  Yet this poor woman, who served him faithfully, who corrected her attitude when he spoke to her, who had the faith to say, If you had been here my brother would not have died, and even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you, John 11:21,22, this woman we hold up for all generations as a bad example. 

I hope in my lifetime I can do as well as she did.

Jesus said unto [Martha] I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes on me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whoever lives and believes on me shall never die.  Do you believe this?  She said unto him, Yes, Lord, I have believed that you are the Christ, the Son of God, even he who comes into the world.  John 11:25-27.

Dene Ward

We got the call on a Sunday morning at 5:32.  We were on the road as soon as we could be, but Silas’s little brother Judah beat us there by half an hour.  Mommy and Daddy had waited as long as they could, their three year old sitting big-eyed and quiet in the labor room, but ultimately had to call a church couple to take him.

About 1:00 those helpful people brought Silas back to the hospital, where we sat in the room with Brooke and Nathan, new baby Judah lying in a special bed under a warming light.  It took far longer than it should have to get that baby’s body temperature to an appropriate number. 

Silas, still a bit confused, and very tired, ran straight to his parents.  Nathan lifted him into his arms and carried him over to the little bed.  He looked down at his four hour old, wrinkly red baby brother, his tiny head still misshapen from his passage into the world, and said, “What’s that?”

I couldn’t help it.  A bubble of laughter escaped me at his innocent honesty.  When we told him this was his little brother Judah, the one who had been in Mommy’s tummy, his little head swung back and forth between his mommy and the figure in the clear, plastic bed, his eyes full of skepticism.  This was not what he expected.

It took a couple of weeks for him to really come around, but who could blame him?  He was expecting a brother like the brothers and sisters his little friends had, and probably just as big.  He was expecting a playmate, but every time he shared his toys, the little interloper simply lay there and slept.  Where is the fun in that?  But children are nothing if not adaptable, and his little brother is growing on him.

I fear some people look on their lives as Christians with the same skepticism with which Silas first viewed Judah.  Freedom, they were promised, but all they see are rules.  Joy, they were promised, yet they still suffer the same trials, illnesses, and financial problems as everyone else, even the same ones as before they were converted.  They’ve lost friends, and rifts in the family are worse than ever.  They expected people to come running at their every beck and call, yet every Sunday the preacher, an elder, a Bible class teacher—or maybe all three!!—tells them they have to serve others.

Jesus dealt with the same problem among his followers.  Some came expecting to be entertained (Luke 7:32; 23:8).  Some came expecting to be fed (John 6:26).  Some came expecting to be part of a victorious army and a glorious kingdom here on the earth (Luke 19:11).  Very few “came around,” changing their expectations to match his offered reality.  He never changed his offer—if they wouldn’t accept it, he simply sent them away.  He drove off far more than ever accepted him (John 6:43-67).

Sometimes we have to do the same.  We cannot change the church the Lord bought with His own blood to suit the carnal nature of an unspiritual world—we don’t have that right.  Be careful what you offer your friends and neighbors. God didn’t promise lives of ease, health and wealth, or even a church family that always behaves itself.  The test of faith comes when things are difficult, not when they are easy.

The church wasn’t what the Jews expected.  As a result most of them missed out on the promised kingdom.  Examine your own expectations.  Make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to you.

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. Romans 14:17-18

Dene Ward

Most of us know the story of Hannah who asked God for a son and promised to give him back.  She certainly made an amazing vow and an astounding sacrifice I can scarcely understand.  But do we consider her many examples in prayer?

Hannah was the second wife of a man of Ephraim, a Levite (1 Chron 6:33-38) named Elkanah.  The story reminds me a bit of Leah and Rachel, except that Hannah  and Peninnah were not sisters, and Hannah, the favored wife, was far more righteous and God-fearing than Rachel, who stole her father’s household gods (Gen 31:19) and nagged Jacob to death about her inability to conceive as if it were his fault (Gen 30:1,2).  Going to God was Rachel’s last resort, after first badgering Jacob, then offering her handmaid (Gen 30:3) and finally using mandrakes (Gen 30:14), the aphrodisiac of the day.  You should take a few minutes sometime and read the meanings of her children’s names (by her handmaid) if you want a flavor of her mindset, and compare them with the names of Leah’s children.  Then of course, there was Joseph.  When God answered her prayer for her own child, she named him, “Give me another one.”  Look at the marvelous contrast of Hannah, who after asking for a child and receiving him, gave him up to God, with no promise that she would ever have another.

Hannah shows us what prayer is supposed to be—not some halfhearted muttering of ritual phrases, but a “pouring out of the soul” 1 Sam 1:15.  She prayed so fervently that Eli, watching her, thought she was drunk.  As she told Eli, “Out of the abundance of my complaint and my provocation have I spoken” v 16.  Her prayer life was such that her relationship with Jehovah gave her the confidence to tell Him exactly how she felt, in the plainest of speech, evidently.  You do not speak to someone that way unless you have spent plenty of time with him and know him intimately.  Are we that close to God?

She also teaches us what prayer should do for us.  Look at the contrast between v 10 and v 18.  Before her prayer “she was in bitterness of soul…and wept sore.”  Afterward, she “went her way and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad.” 

Of course, Hannah had the reassurances of a priest and judge that God would give her what she had prayed for, but don’t we have the assurance of the Holy Spirit through the word He gave that God listens and answers our prayers?  Shouldn’t we exhibit some measure of ease after our prayers?          

In whom do we have our faith?  If the doctors say it is hopeless, do we pray anyway?  Do we carry our umbrellas, even though the weatherman says, “No rain in sight?”  Do we pray on and on and on, even when it seems that what we ask will never come to pass?  God does not run by a timetable like we do.  Hannah had the faith that says, “It’s in God’s hands now,” and she was able to get on with her life.  Life does go on, no matter which answer we get, and God expects us to continue to serve Him with a “thy will be done” attitude.

“The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much,” James tells us in 5:16.  Hannah shows us it works for righteous women as well.  Can people tell by our lives that we believe it?

Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer.  From the end of the earth will I call unto you, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I.  For you have been a refuge to me, a strong tower from the enemy.  I will dwell in your tabernacle forever.  I will take refuge in the covert of your wings.  Psa 61:1-4

Dene Ward